NLS Other Writings

I Have a Dream: Transforming Learning and Access
to Information

President and Chief Executive Officer
The Canadian National Institute for the Blind
President
The World Blind Union
North America/Caribbean Region

Address to the 2002 National Conference of Librarians:
*Our Digital World: A Leap to the Future*
National Library Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
Library of Congress

April 29, 2002

Richmond, Virginia

I'm not here to talk about my life, but one memory may serve to illustrate how
far we've come in
achieving the dream of improved access to information. I vividly recall the
morning in September
1970 when the effects of the glaucoma I had been born with finally took the
rest of my reading
eyesight, and I could no longer read the morning newspaper, which had been my
much-loved daily
practice. Little did I dare to dream that some 30 years later, I would once
again have the newspaper
delivered each morning to my home, thanks to a new CNIB electronic newspaper
service
specifically designed so that its users could read again and keep up with the
world.

Digital media today have the potential to close the information gap between
readers who are blind
and readers who are sighted in much the same way that the invention of the Gutenberg
press
narrowed the information gap between those who created information and those
who received it.
Fulfilling this potential is my dream.

When monks no longer controlled information, scholarship thrived, creativity
expanded, and
scientific study began to inform the human condition, empowering the citizenry
and highlighting
the importance of access to information . Last year in Washington at the IFLA
conference, a
presentation focused on how literacy and access to library services in developing
countries had
transformed the lives of blind people whose only fate up till then had been
a life of poverty.

I have been working for the advancement and improvement of the social and economic
conditions
of people who are blind over the past 35 years and have seen my own organization
The
Canadian National Institute for the Blind grow and flourish through some challenging
times. I
am blind as a result of congenital glaucoma and know only too well what those
I am committed to
serve face daily.

In my duties as president of the CNIB, many of the challenges I face fall within
the scope of your
profession. We look to you for your understanding and your solutions. We understand
our own
needs but we need your hearts, minds, and hands to help make our lives better;
we cannot do it
alone. My dream is that the world will work together to provide full access
to information for
people who are blind or visually impaired. That one day I will be able to pick
up and read what my
neighbour reads, as one of our clients has put it. I will not only be able to
do this at home, but
anywhere I may be around the world. I will, through a virtual library for the
blind, blur the
boundaries of many countries and many sources of content, denying the constraints
of geography
and other differences, and be able to read a book produced somewhere else, selected
from a virtual
catalogue and downloaded from anywhere. I want this dream fulfilled for every
blind person in the
world today.

In my dream, we will be able to do this because librarians will strive for
a common technology and common standards for producing, distributing, and accessing
information. They will have carried forward that banner and understood that
people who are blind, wherever we live, are part of the global economy and part
of the information age and should not be disenfranchised by either globalization
or technology.

The ultimate achievement by librarians for the blind is the use of new digital
technology to achieve
integration with mainstream libraries. When the Kurzweill Reader was first introduced
to Canada
in the 1970s, it was the size of a dishwasher and cost $50,000. Today this device
is commonly used
and affordable; it costs less than $2,000, reads any type of print, and is used
to read information
everywhere from supermarket check-outs to law offices.

Good libraries do not work alone; only by ensuring that we are working together,
seeking
mainstream solutions, will we be able to provide an affordable service for the
blind that is
comparable to that provided to the sighted. I urge you to advocate in your library
associations,
with your governments, with those who create information for us or develop the
technologies we
need to read books to ensure that your readers who are blind are part of those
mainstream
solutions.

Realizing that single dream would transform so many lives. The CNIB has a credible
record
abroad for the work it does internationally to enable the fruits of learning
and give confidence and
independence to people who are blind in many countries, the poorest of the poor
discarded
by the very societies that they should be able to look to for protection and
help. As president of the
World Blind Union for the North America/Caribbean Region, I see firsthand the
limited access to
information faced by blind people living in developing countries children who
share one slate
and stylus among a class of 30 and use banana leaves to transcribe braille because
they have no
paper. Ninety-five per cent of children who are blind in developing countries
do not attend school,
and poor families often make terrible choices between children who are disabled
and those who are
not. Yet we know that talent comes from anywhere, and ability is not limited
by blindness, for our
history is replete with blind men and women who have led outstanding lives once
given the
opportunity. The Library of Congress Bibliography of the Blind and the World
Blind Union's
publication on successful blind women simply support the notion that where opportunity
is
provided, talent surfaces, regardless of blindness. Leadership fosters hopefulness.

The most recent manifestation of this is our commitments to a conference to
be held in Jamaica this
May in cooperation with so many agencies the International Federation of Library
Associations
(IFLA), the FORCE Foundation, the Association of Caribbean University and Research
Institution
Libraries (ACURIL), and the Library of Congress. Organized by CNIB vice president,
Rosemary
Kavanagh, in her capacity as chair of the Section of Libraries for the Blind
of IFLA, this major
initiative will bring together, for the first time, leaders in education and
librarianship from the three
major languages of the Caribbean and Latin America: French, Spanish, and English,
to deliberate
on how learning opportunities can be extended to people in these regions of
the Caribbean who are
blind.

The CNIB is also committed to working with the IFLA, the DAISY Consortium,
Recording for the
Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D), and the initiatives in North America lead by
Kurt Cylke and his
team here at NLS whose solidity and commitment to careful planning and analysis
are much
respected. These initiatives are important, because learning, information, and
education that are
accessible, open, and available have enabled people who are blind to be part
of the workforce,
strive for independence, and be the best they can be despite their disabilities.
No one agency or
institution will have all the answers, but together we will have a better one
and together we will
eliminate the "Tower of Babel" an expression I use to describe the
many systems or service
configurations that, while they aid access, also create barriers.

In preparing my presentation, I wavered between entitling it "I Had a
Dream" or "I Have a Dream,"
since, in many ways, my dream has been fulfilled. I live in a prosperous country
and I have the job
I want. Since more than 80% of the world's people who are blind live in developing
countries, I
selected the more hopeful title because dreams have been the wellspring for
the significant events
that have changed the world. Christopher Columbus had a dream, Alexander Graham
Bell had a
dream, Helen Keller had a dream, Nelson Mandela had a dream, Canadian Prime
Minister Pierre
Trudeau had a dream, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had a dream. Yet dreams
too are affected
by reality, and every one of those dreamers had to struggle to achieve his dream.

The fact is that the part of the world that I am fortunate to live in is privileged
and wealthy, which
ensured that, despite my blindness, my dreams could prosper. But there are 160
million people in
the world who are blind for whom the dream is distant and unreal and life consists
of grinding
poverty and little hope. It cannot be that we gather here today without reflecting
on how what we
do can change some, if not all, of that. The events of September 11 came crashing
into our world
with the harsh reminder that we cannot go about our business in a cocoon. In
any case, cocoons
have never been the source of dreams. What new dreams will you have or inspire
when this
conference is over? What cocoons will you have shed, and what new wisdom will
you leave to
light the days that follow? I leave you with the thought that you have the power
to make this digital
age one that transforms access to information for people who are blind in the
way that the
Gutenberg press did for those who are sighted; this must be your dream and our
unwavering goal as
we experience the events of the next few days.